Feb. 2014 – Chinese huanghuali furniture brings furious bidding

While each of the categories performed beyond expectation, it was the Asian category that stunned both staff and crowd. Coming from The Gerber estate, were 14 lots of Chinese hardwood huanghuali furniture ranging from tables, to chairs, screens and cabinets. Overall, the lots offered in this collection carried pre-sale estimates of $1,000 to $8,000 but those were left in the dust once the furious bidding began for each piece offered. The top seller in this collection and the sale overall was a pair of huanghuali and mixed wood cabinets which achieved the astonishing price of $245,000. The second highest in this collection was a table and four chairs that sold for $179,000 followed by a pair of cabinets that sold for $131,000 and a table, the top inset with floating panels, which brought $101,000. In total, this 14 piece collection achieved $1,156,000.

A gentleman from California’s motherlode region showed Rick Unruh, head of the Fine Arts Department, a couple photos of an aboriginal artwork during an appraisal event in Sacramento, CA. He told Rick he’d bought the piece twenty years earlier for around $20,000 in Australia. He invited Rick to his home for dinner and to see the work. Rick drove all the way back up twice more to his house for dinner before the man would let Rick sell the work at auction. The Fine Art Category had a record setting day achieving the highest U.S. price to date on a work by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri (Australia, 1932-2002) titled “Possum Dreaming,” achieving a very impressive $131,000.